What are these eggs?

[namechange12524]

Over the last couple of weeks we've found three of these egg shells in our garden. One on grass, one on the patio and one on woodchip. None near trees so presumably not birds. DH looked it up on ChatGPT and it said it was probably a reptile egg 😱 Anyone got any thoughts - what is it and what should we do about it?

We are in the UK btw, in a suburb of a large town in the south east.

Don't foxes leave hen's eggs?

I think they are bird eggs.. some bigger bird is stealing from a nest.. eating the inside and dropping the shell.
It happens..but I've forgotten which birds.

They look like pigeon eggs to me. Reptiles lay leathery, flexible eggs. These look chalky/ brittle.

Possibly pigeon eggs.

Magpies tend to remove them from nests in my garden.

I agree with pigeon eggs.

It means there are baby/fledgling pigeons around you somewhere (probably the top of a block of flats or an office building, if not your chimney).

You don't need to do anything about it at all.

Maybe some birds take the empty shells out of their nests once the chicks have hatched, and drop them elsewhere to put predators off the scent.

Yes, pigeon eggs unfortunately.

Other people have answered the what are they.

What to do about it?
Pick them up and put them in the compost. No need to do anything more.

Thank you all for the quick responses. Thank god for that! I do see both pigeons and magpies in the garden so it makes sense. There are no office blocks or blocks of flats nearby so I guess they must be in the chimney.

Why do you assume they are in the chimney? You would have heard them. No trees nearby?

Many birds remove the eggs from their nest after the chicks have hatch, and fly some distance away and drop the shells so that their nest doesn't attract predators.

Thank god for that!

U.K. reptiles are harmless anyway, except for adders which you're very unlikely to encounter in suburbia.

As above, bigger birds will scoop up eggs from the nests of small birds. It's an easy snack. Then they will be discarding the waste (egg shell) wherever it lands. I live next to a couple of swan nests and they have seagulls hovering around trying to snatch an egg.

Yes, most birds do that. And not all birds nest in trees. Looks a bit small for pigeon but that’s the most likely

I've got bluetits netting in the garden and the parents regularly remove the chicks poo sacs and carefully drop them on the patio as they fly over where they burst and leave white splodges.